The NFL, the Military, and the Problem With Masculine Institutions

Like the National Football League and
the military, so many institutions in our society remain organized
around gender. This, in itself, isn’t news.

When women entered the work
world in droves in the 1970s, work institutions remained structured
around the bread-winning male employee and the stay-at-home wife.

Today,
workplace and family-leave policies are still catching up with the
concept of the dual-earner family.

The important point here, though, is that it’s not the composition of
the institution - how many men, how many women - that makes it gendered.
It’s the organization of the institution around ideals of masculinity
and femininity that makes it gendered.

And that’s a point that’s been
missing over the past few weeks as both the NFL and the military have
come under intense scrutiny for rampant sexual and domestic abuse.

In “Son, Men Don’t Get Raped,”
a collection of first-hand accounts of men who were sexually assaulted
while serving in the military, Nathaniel Penn cites military data that
38 men are sexually assaulted in the military - every day.

Women
in the military certainly have a higher chance of being assaulted, but
male recruits still do experience sexual assault on a regular basis. I
have spent the last eight years studying the military as a sociologist.
And from what I’ve learned, I wouldn’t be surprised if that number was
actually much higher.

The military is a gendered institution in that it promotes and
encourages violent masculinity. Every aspect of the military is geared
toward the enterprise of waging successful “macho” war - as opposed to
“sissy” diplomacy - against an enemy often described as “limp wristed” or
“wimpy.”

War is repeatedly waged to ensure that the U.S. maintains a
dominating masculine force on the world stage. My own research
shows President George W. Bush’s cowboy masculinity was considered the
appropriate response to terrorism in 2003, while, more recently, President Obama has been urged to “man up” against ISIS terrorists.

To assert American manhood, the military must train recruits to fight
and kill. Just like boys learn to associate masculinity with
aggression, recruits must be schooled on the correct kind of
hyper-violent masculinity for war.

New recruits are called “pussies” and
“girls” by commanders and older recruiters in order to humiliate them
so they know their place in the institution. Recruits must prove their
masculinity by taking the humiliation (even sexual assault) “like a man”
and never showing weakness.

The horrific incidents of sexual assault described in Penn’s article
are the byproduct of an institution built around cultivating and
rewarding violent expressions of masculinity.

Even the institutional
response to sexual assault is telling. If the incident is reported at
all, and if that report is not then ignored, the victim discovers there
are no institutional mechanisms for dealing with the assault.
Institutional questionnaires, forms, and treatment all assume female
victims.

Discharge papers write off victims as mentally ill. Men cannot
actually be considered victims - there’s no structure in place for this to
happen - and instead they are aggressors learning how to dominate one
another before dominating the battlefield.

It’s hard to consider all of this and then not think of the NFL.
Football is just another example of an institution where aggressive
masculinity is cultivated and rewarded. When the first openly gay NFL
player, Michael Sam, kissed his boyfriend upon being drafted, many were outraged
and questioned if this was really the right kind of masculinity for
football.

Aggressive masculinity is encouraged on the field, but what
happens when aggression, as we’ve seen with Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson,
and countless others, is directed as violence toward significant others
and children?

Sexual assault in the military and domestic violence in the NFL show
the consequences of organizing institutions around violent masculinity.
All of which makes me wonder: Can an institution built on violence ever
possibly create and uphold a zero tolerance policy for violence outside
of it?

Wendy Christensen
is an assistant professor at William Paterson University whose
specialty includes the intersection of gender, war, and the media.
Follow her on Twitter @wendyphd.